Millar Western retires its last beehive burner
When Millar Western purchased the Fox Creek sawmill in 2007, it inherited a beehive burner that had been granted a permit to operate until the end of 2014, to dispose of wood wastes from the lumber manufacturing process. With the Alberta government and forest industry moving to eliminate all beehive burners in the province, we quickly began exploring alternative disposal strategies for the 65,000 green metric tonnes (GMT) of wood residuals burned annually.
The project was put on hold when the Fox Creek sawmill was lost to fire in 2008, but moved back into a priority position once the replacement mill was built. We identified an option that would see the residuals go to several customers for different end uses, but considerable capital upgrades would be needed to process and transfer the materials to meet client needs — projects that could not be completed before the permit expired. With a plan in hand, we were granted permission to continue operating the burner for another 18 months, to July 1, 2016, giving us time to fully implement the new strategy.
Then, Millar Western took a new look at wood-waste disposal options and was able to identify a better solution: regional biomass-power company Whitecourt Power will now receive all of Fox Creek’s wood waste, in as-is condition, requiring far less modification of site facilities. “Our goal was to find a commercially feasible, environmentally sound way of disposing of our wood waste, and this plan fully meets that objective,” said VP of Wood Products, Stefan Demharter.
Earlier this year, Fox Creek completed the necessary capital improvements at its site, adding a new loading area and converting the burner into a storage silo for the wood residuals being transferred to Whitecourt Power. Notes Stefan, “The benefits are numerous: not only have burner emissions been entirely eliminated, improving air quality, but waste material is being converted to green energy, with Fox Creek now supplying about 20% of Whitecourt Power’s fuel needs to generate about 4.5 MW of bio-electricity.”
The Fox Creek incinerator was officially taken out of commission on June 30, 2016, relegating another of Alberta’s beehive burners, once commonplace in our industry but quickly disappearing from the landscape, to history.